Just when you think you can enjoy America’s gun culture in all of its abstract glory, some asshole decides to go and shoot up the mall where you spent a substantial portion of your teen years:

The Town Center remains on lock-down status while SWAT teams are making systematic sweeps of the stores and corridors. The mall’s theaters have been evacuated and several TriMet buses have arrived to take witnesses away for orderly interviews.

The shooting rampage cut short the holiday atmosphere at the mall, instead spreading a pall of horror and shock.

According to preliminary reports, a man with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire near Macy’s around 3:29 p.m. The man, who may have been wearing body armor and camouflage clothing, also was seen near the mall’s food court.

John Canzano, sports columnist for The Oregonian, reported that as many as 60 shots were fired while he was shopping at the mall. Canzano said he first noticed people “running out of the mall kind of crying and upset.” He stopped a person who said “somebody has an automatic weapon and is shooting.” The man called the scene “not good, not good.”

Let me be the first to refrain from politicizing this tragedy by pointing out that if all those people running and crying and upset had been armed with handguns, this kind of tragedy could have metastasized been avoided.

However, in countries like England, Japan, and France, where there are strict limits on who can own a gun and how they have to be handled, these kinds of things almost never happen. Almost makes you think that there might be a relationship there.

And Switzerland, where people are required to keep a machine gun in their home, also has very little of the crazy ass shoot up the mall/cinema/restaurant shit we have. It’s not just guns, which is too bad. It means the problem will be harder to solve.

The firearm and ammunition is issued to reservists participating in national defense. It’s not for rec shooting or personal defense.

Requiring military training before people receive their weapons allows Switzerland to weed out crazy people unlike in the US where you don’t have to demonstrate any knowledge or training to buy deadly weapons.

However, in countries like England, Japan, and France, where there are strict limits on who can own a gun and how they have to be handled, these kinds of things almost never happen. Almost makes you think that there might be a relationship there.

The relationship could be a common cause, not cause and effect. The same factors that made it more likely that England, Japan, and France would have stricter gun control enforcement are very much the same factors that would lead to less gun violence.

You can look at it another way, Japan, England, and France would likely have much lower gun crime rates even without the laws.

Another shooting in a public mall that has a no firearm policy. They don’t seem to be working

You’re absolutely right. Clearly, more stringent measures should be taken, preferably by an entity that has some sort of meaningful authority to enforce its policies.

Like, say, some sort of federal gun control policy. That might do the trick – since clearly some unbalanced gun owners cannot be trusted to obey the various “no firearms” policies in place throughout the country.

Grew up a mile from the Town Center, spent many hours there as a teen. My parents still shop there weekly; they are standing on their porch in Happy Valley watching the newscopters circle the mall. But yeah, let’s not make this about gun control or mental illness or anything…

Large places of public accommodation should have armed security available if needed – perhaps police overtime details. We make arena owners have police details for crowds as large as the population of a mall.

I agree, but I’d take it one step further. If some place is going to make me give up the most effective means of defending myself, they should be implicitly agreeing to handle that defense for me, and liable if they fail. The “security” at my local mall on segways doesn’t give me a lot of confidence though…

I don’t know what you mean, it obviously couldn’t happen anyways. It was a gun free zone. Totally unpossible.
But if I were there, I would have gotten the F out of there unless there wasn’t any other option. Then I honestly have no idea what I would have done, nor do I ever want to have to find out.

If you think walking around with a gun on your person in the mall is “the most effective means of defending myself,” you have appalling judgement and a remarkably poor understanding of personal safety.

If you think walking around with a gun on your person in the mall is “the most effective means of defending myself,” you have appalling judgement and a remarkably poor understanding of personal safety.

I would say that, with good training and a level head, having a gun on ones person is as effective defense as one can find.

However, if the mall were to assume that all who might carry a gun does have the necessary training and preparation, they would be far more negligent of shopper safety than they are under the current no gun policy.

And the most interesting part of concealed carry laws that vary from state to state is the most conservative states seem to require more training to be licensed and the more liberal states that have “shall issue” laws the most lax.

For instance, Texas has some of the most extensive training in safety, proficiency and applicable law about use of deadly force. Vermont, on the other hand, has nothing. You just carry. No license required.

And cops also wear uniforms and generally are coordinated and/or in communication with each other.

The worst thing that having a shooter in the mall, is having a bunch of armed idiots brandishing their weapons trying to be heroes, you see an armed man how can you tell if this is the shooter or not? Worse, he sees you with a gun and turns toward you, are you sure he won’t confuse you? Better be safe than sorry and you shoot him, and that has a chain reaction effect in all the morons that took their guns to the mall to be “safe”.

I don’t remember if it was here or at another site, but I once had a racist wingnut tell me that I didn’t really understand the challenges of being an inner-city teacher, because I was teaching Asians.

While your use of BOLD CAPS is indeed persuasive, could it be at all possible that police are more than six times likely to be armed? Do we really want civilians to be as likely as police to shoot? Are we (and I use the term loosely) completely fucking insane?

I think that you are missing the point that you shouldn’t need a gun to protect yourself in a public arena like this. I think it is also not very well publicised over there that this doesn’t happen in countries where there is gun control

You refuse to accept it, but what can you or anyone else (including me) do?

Any regulation of any guns or gun owners is out of the question. Neither the supreme court nor elected officials are going to allow anything like that.

And no one is going to agree to have the government pay for mental health care for every person. Even that wouldn’t rule out incidents like these because they are not always predictable in advance. (NB – In retrospect, they are almost always predictable.)

Autos kill a tremendous amount of people, but those who are unwilling to further regulate their ownership and use because of public danger feel that way because they believe the traffic deaths are a necessary price we all pay for the important service autos provide.

What’s not discussed by the other side is the important role that guns play…important enough that they’re specifically enshrined in our constitution.

It’s always easy to call for more regulation and restriction on something that is not woven into the fabric of your life and you feel has no value.

Autos kill a tremendous amount of people, but those who are unwilling to further regulate their ownership and use because of public danger feel that way because they believe the traffic deaths are a necessary price we all pay for the important service autos provide.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT IS SOCIALISTICAL. I HEARD THEY HAVE BUSSES IN KENYA. WHY DON’T YOU LGM GUYS JUST MOVE TO FRANCE HUH? THEY HAVE TRAINS THERE!!!111 TRAINS THAT SERVE WAFFLES ON THEM. EXCEPT THERE THEY’RE CALLED CREPES. WAIT, WHAT WAS I TALKING ABOUT? OH YEAH GUN CARS. BONNIE AND CLYDE WERE REALLY COOL, AND THEY HAD GUNS AND CARS! NO TRAINS FOR THEM!!!111!!!

SURE, IGNORE GHANA, WHICH IS PARADISE ON EARTH, JUST LIKE LGM ALWAYS IGNORES GHANA. GHANA IS AWESOME, AND J OTTO LOVES IT, EXCEPT COMMUNISTS HAVE KEPT HIM FROM TEACHING IN THE UNITED STATES, AND HE’S NOT BITTER AT ALL ABOUT THIS, BECAUSE GHANA IS GREAT, SO JUST SHUT UP, YOU STALINIST YOU.

While I don’t agree with this in principle, I do think that’s become the cultural attitude about these things in practice (which is what I think you are actually getting at, unless I’m misinterpreting your comment). I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. Americans have simply decided to accept it.

I think we should start sending tasteless congratulation cards to the NRA en masse when these things happen.

“Thanks to the NRA, Mass Murder is the Price for FREEDOM!”

“Thanks, NRA! Because of you and your fearmongering, some more innocent people DIED today!

Maybe since Americans are waking up to the fact that other RW ideas are obvious BS (like “let’s give all the monies to the rich people so’s we’ll all be RICH!”), they will finally start to question the ridiculous idea that MORE GUNS = LESS VIOLENCE.

If the world went the way the NRA would like, then Clackamas Town Center would not have been a gun-free zone, shoppers would have had the option to be armed, and the shooter would have known that he may have to contend with people prepared and ready to defend themselves.

However, outfits like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence have led to the banning of firearms from many places frequented by the public. In those gun-free zones, people are virtually defenseless. Did you ever notice that the vast majority of cases of mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones”?

So, send your congratulations cards to the Brady Campaign: “Congratulations! Because of you, a bad guy didn’t risk getting shot by an innocent bystander! Because of you and your fearmongering, some more innocent people DIED today!”

In Virginia, the number of guns purchased increased by 73 percent from 2006-11. The total number of gun-related crimes decreased by 24 percent during the same period.

Lol, I remember reading on CNN that they actually had better than average accuracy for Police too. They shot three people through the guy, and five via ricochets.

I couldn’t think of better proof against the more guns argument than that. They police were on the scene, and even with better than average shooting still couldn’t avoid shooting 8 more people than intended…

I believe it was Will Rogers, commenting on a shooting in NYC where some innocent bystanders were shot by police, who praised their accuracy since it is hard enough to find anyone innocent in New York, much less hit them with a bullet.

You know, the NRA used to be about training in gun safety and GUN CONTROL. Then sometime around the same time the RW adopted the Southern Strategy, the NRA decided to be All GUNS ALL THE TIME with no eXCEPtiONS.

The NRA doesn’t care about individual gun ownership or firearm deaths. They are a lobbying arm for America’s Other Big Export – weapons.

Yeah, that’s just the Virginia guns-to-various-Northern-population-centers pipeline rumbling back into operation. Do you not remember the 80’s (lol, course not troll!), something like 2 out of 5 homicide-related guns in NYC came from Virginia!

I think this is indirectly a possibility. I think the gun nuts themselves are politically solid for the conservatives.

I don’t think gun hysteria is ever enough to decide an election, but it can be enough to put a conservative over the top. Chip away at the racism, the misogyny, the fear of sociamalisim, homophobia and soon, the gun nuts won’t be critical.

*sigh* Yes, because what gun-control advocates are clamoring for is the outlawing of all firearms. Not sensible restrictions which prevent criminals and crazies from obtaining weapons with which they can massacre their fellow citizens. That would just make too much damn sense!

Oh, and by the way buddy: us libtards were opposed to the “wars” on drugs and terror long before libertarians decided it was cool.

Even Reagan adviser Martin Anderson conceded this in 1978: “The ‘dismal failure’ of welfare is a myth. There may be great inefficiencies in our welfare programs . . . But if we step back and judge the vast array of welfare programs, on which we spend billions of dollars every year, by two basic criteria–the completeness of coverage for those who really need help, and the adequacy of help they do receive–the picture changes dramatically. Judged by these standards our welfare system has been a brilliant success. The war on poverty is over for all practical purposes.”

Shorter Brad: I don’t understand the difference between “someone” and “a child.”

If we are talking about child achievement and welfare’s success, then why are official income poverty rates at their highest point since the mid-60s and rising?

If our welfare programs were improving child acheivement, one would expect official income poverty to be decreasing steadily, as an ever greater portion of children are finding greater mobility and opportunity.

That isn’t happening. The next generation of children is just as likely to need government assistance to maintain a basic standard of living. Maybe more according to that chart.

If our welfare programs were improving child acheivement, one would expect official income poverty to be decreasing steadily, as an ever greater portion of children are finding greater mobility and opportunity.

Actually, given that we’ve been cutting at welfare for thirty years, no, we would expect that, given the actually effectiveness that we saw back when we still thought of ourselves as a commonwealth, that cutting these effective programs would lead to back outcomes of exactly the sort that we are seeing.

And please, for the love of Cthulhu, don’t fall back on using numbers that are not adjusted for inflation or population growth to argue that spending has gone up. Because fuck me, that is a tiresome strategy.

Actually, given that we’ve been cutting at welfare for thirty years, no, we would expect that, given the actually effectiveness that we saw back when we still thought of ourselves as a commonwealth, that cutting these effective programs would lead to back outcomes of exactly the sort that we are seeing.

Here’s what I get from that chart:

The % of people who are in poverty following taxes and transfers has been steadily dropping. The people who are in poverty because their income is insufficient to support a basic livelihood has gone up.

The thing is that I have been a libertarian, and most of my reading and discussions come from a libertarian perspective. My favorite political writers tend to advocate the ways in which free markets can help promote social justice.

While there are going to be a lot of shared goals, we are going to have a lot of disagreement about how to acheive those goals.

But to me, its the values and goals that are important, and that’s why these discussions don’t implode.

And finally, despite some truly hard headedness, I do not come away from these discussions completely unswayed.

No one’s arguing that the War on Poverty has been perfect, or that it’s over. But what genuinely perplexes me is the tendency among libertarians to hold certain programs (especially if they’re initiated by liberals)to standards so impossibly high that failure is all but guaranteed.

It’s not enough that the WoP has mitigated some of poverty’s worst features and substantially improved the lives of millions of people; it hasn’t eliminated poverty completely, so therefore it should have never happened.

It’s not enough that the New Deal reduced unemployment, spurred economic growth, and prevented countless citizens from falling into utter destitution; it didn’t end the Depression in the abritrary time restraints we’re retroactively imposing, so therefore it was a failure.

Well, fuck me then, I guess it’s too bad that we can’t have a conversation about maybe the state of regulation we have now is the wrong one and we should make adjustments to that, it can only be the sort of screechy all out assault that resonates in the minds of the sad, dumb, and terrified.

Oh, you mean that’s not true, and adults can have a conversation that doesn’t involve plumbing the depths of your panic-addled id? Thank fucking god.

It’s really a simplistic argument to claim Prohibition failed and the War on some Drugs failed and equate it to gun control. Nobody is talking about banning all guns.

The standard gunloon tactic is to claim any reasoable gun regulation is the first step to the gulags. Of course, campaigns to limit drunk driving failed because of better education/enforcement. And driving deaths have soared because of seat belt laws and the mandated auto safety features like air bags and crash standards. All ’cause the Govt declared a War on Driving.

Aside from the emotional costs of gun violence, there are significant economic costs. I’ll bet the store owners in that Clackamas Mall really appreciate having to shut down for a couple days in the middle of the XMas shopping season.

There are so many facets of the gun issue that I don’t understand. We have a Constitutional right to semi-automatic handguns, but not fully automatic AKs without an expensive ATF license? Why the fuck not?

If I had a M249 while walking around the mall, I could’ve sawed this guy in half lickity split. But noooooo, I have to settle for shitty personal defense weapons like a 9mm that I can only push out to 30 rounds with an extended mag.

Having been much much much too close to a couple national scale events, I treat most shooting threads like they’re filled with Ebola.

The single solitary bright spot in the entire DC sniper case was that the NRA gun-fetish crowd* had fuck-all to say about it. When your murderer is 200 yards away your handgun might as well be on the moon.

*There are members of the NRA who aren’t Second Amendment absolutists. I used to be one.

The single solitary bright spot in the entire DC sniper case was that the NRA gun-fetish crowd* had fuck-all to say about it.

True accounting story: the most loathesome client I ever had was a company that designed and ran online sales sites for mom-and-pop gun stores. That gun was a sniper rifle, bought in WA, and only 4 stores sold it. Two were their clients. And for weeks, everybody was really, really subdued over the thought that they had a hand in selling it.

But then it turned out it wasn’t one of their stores, so back to business as usual.

The DC killer didn’t actually use a “sniper rifle” or even a scope. It was a .223 at under 100 yards. There are millions of hunting rifles floating around that could be used by a psychotic to kill at long distances if equipped with a decent scope.

Gun fetishists see photos of Israeli citizens carrying around military assault rifles and assume Israel is a gunloon utopia. Like the Switzerland fallacy discussed above, Israel has some pretty tough gun regulations that include licensing, medical and psychological clearances and a zero tolerance attitude toward any criminal behavior, alcohol/drug abuse.

“If protection from starvation is a sufficient measure of success for you, great. I want to see signs that all people are having more opportunity and acting upon it.”

His wish to see signs that people have opportunity and are acting upon that opportunity is not something that any government program can provide. I had every opportunity a person can have, I’m bright, my parents were achievers with means and worked st to try to motivate me. When I first went to college I majored in Bridge, the card game.

The second time I went to college I was more interested, and studied Appalachian history, labor history, and wrote some barely interesting papers, but learned nothing that would yield a career.

The third time I went to college I was 30, and I went after consulting with an advisor who guided me into a course of study that – surprise – brought forth a career I could do something with.

But the will to stick with courses I didn’t like came from within – even with government aid in the form of VA advice and the GI bill, I had to summon the drive to spend hours in study of subjects that in the abstract I despised.

What I learned in those classes was mostly directly helpful in my profession, which I was pretty successful in.

But no one person or agency can provide ambition or gumption to a person who would rather eat commodity cheese and cook meth in the bathroom.

And there are a significant group of people who, even though reasonably bright and capable, can’t get to work every day on time, won’t cook food that is not appetizing to them personally, won’t do things they don’t like to do to make money.

Then there are those who are absolutely incapable of doing anything that someone will pay them for; the group of people who are off the rails, mentally incapable or disturbed. People who can’t stand to be with other people all day, like hermits.

I know people who are gifted with monster skills, but who can’t bear to touch another person for fear of – something. How are they to work and use their skills?

So, Bradp, I’m sorry, but you can’t have that perfect world, where people who have opportunity will take advantage of it. There are people who are born confidence grifters, or thieves, or drug addicts, hooked on something, anything.

People who can barely talk coherently. People who can’t manage money they win in a lottery or at the casino. People who cannot succeed at anything but misery. That’s sad, isn’t it…

1) There is quite a disconnect between how you describe the events of your own life and how you describe the pitiful existence of others.

“The third time I went to college I was 30, and I went after consulting with an advisor who guided me into a course of study that – surprise – brought forth a career I could do something with.”

That is juxtaposed with this:

“People who can barely talk coherently. People who can’t manage money they win in a lottery or at the casino. People who cannot succeed at anything but misery. That’s sad, isn’t it…”

Have you considered the possibility that it was incompetence and not your choice of majors that lead to your slow start?

2) I never said I was looking for perfection. I would be fine with improvement to start.

3) You throw drug addicts in with theives which is problematic, but if you can’t see how drug laws are making things exponentially worse for people prone to drug abuse, there is no point in pushing into more subtle behaviors and policies.

1) I don’t think incompetence is something you get over. I think it’s usually a complex combination of factors that I lack. The evidence of this is that I wound up a successful software developer and project manager. My major was philosophy, technically, but I mostly played cards, as I was not motivated to study.

I’m obviously talking about people who are capable but don’t succeed AND people who will never succeed because they are either not capable or too ill to attempt to be capable.

2) I too would settle for gradual improvement, as perfection isn’t humanly possible very often. I think the lack of political support for helping the under-classes probably slows down improvement, and that we are obviously better off than we were in 1932. But we have a long way to go.

One of my best friends worked for the Human Services folks until she retired. She was assigned to elder support, people who were losing their abilities due to age or abuse of some kind, and she tried to protect them and provide what support the welfare structure allowed. Too many sad stories, often with no one individual really at fault.

Having been on Grand Jury and Petit Jury several times, I’ve seen just a little more misery than people who have avoided jury duty, maybe that improved my empathy, or maybe I came with a larger helping than some.

3) How you can derive my lack of insight into drug law and it’s execution from anything I wrote escapes me. I was trying to list characteristics common to people who can’t take advantage of opportunity; there are plenty of others, but I’m not a professional social worker and so can’t really list syndromes from a testbook.

I think 3) is just another personal attack, just like “incompetent” was. Way to have a conversation on the issues!

Is that from being a libertarian, or do I have the horse/cart/relationship backwards?

My biggest failure is an inability to starve a troll. I keep trying to learn, but I get fooled so often it’s depressing. Here I go again…

I think 3) is just another personal attack, just like “incompetent” was. Way to have a conversation on the issues!

Perhaps.

If you are trying to prove to me that not everyone is capable of providing for himself or herself, you can stop. That much is obvious.

If you want to prove to me that the vast majority of the problem isn’t on the part of social and legal restrictions on opportunity, and is rather on incompetent individuals who just can’t help but screw up their lives, the Drug War is the worst possible example.

Also, the incompetence you describe in other people is far more related to what lead you to major in bridge than actual incompetence.

Many years ago, Playboy published what was probably meant to be a humorous piece on what to do about guns. The proposed solution: a federal license that would say, in effect, “Jim-Bob here is a decent, law-abiding citizne, and can have all the guns he wants.”
Relying on the self-interest of licensees, who, like doctors, lawyers, etc., want to make their licensed status even more privileged, the author expected that the licensees themselves would up the ante on things like background checks, training, registration, and the like, making the licenses more and more exclusive, and more of something they could brag about having.
Eventually, we would have strong gun safety and control laws because the licensees would insist upon them to make themselves feel special.
Makes as much sense as anything I’ve heard.